Notes from a thoughtful self-isolator in Week 5 of our new reality. . . .
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 8
9:34 a.m. — More tactics for maneuvering about your neighborhood in mask and gloves:
— Step out onto the street and go around parked cars, to avoid pedestrians and cyclists on the sidewalks. Try to anticipate the need by keeping an eye open and making your move a block or more in advance, assuming the vehicle traffic will allow it.
— If someone is unloading a truck or moving slowly with a dog, cross to the opposite side of the street if possible, or head up an entry walk or driveway and stand aside to clear the route, if you can.
— Hold your breath in elevators, which often have poor air circulation. Inhale slowly but deeply as the car arrives and doors open, hold your breath once you’ve stepped inside, and if you can’t keep holding it, exhale slowly until the doors open and you can step out.
— If there’s no way to put sufficient distance between yourself and a cyclist or another pedestrian (which happened to me several times on Terwilliger Boulevard), do the hold-your-breath-in-the-elevator trick: breathe in deeply as they approach, hold as you pass, and exhale slowly so they’re at least 30 or 40 feet away the next time you breathe in.
I have no idea whether the above practices raise your chances of avoiding infection, but they encourage you to stay alert while out in public, trying to get your aerobic exercise.
Today I caught more than a minute of video in which one bird chased the other away from the feeder, then followed it down to the fence wires around the balcony to make sure he maintained dominance and drove the other one away (though I’m sure the loser sneaked back to our feeder later!).
I tried to upload the video here to my blog, but it didn’t take. It’s a 123MB file, so the size may have been too much for this site. You’ll have to settle for these screen shots of the two squabbling at the feeder (the victor is still perched at lower left as the vanquished flies off at upper right), and then the victor flying off after having drunk his fill:
I tried to upload the video here to my blog, but it didn’t take. It’s a 123MB file, so the size may have been too much for this site. You’ll have to settle for these screen shots of the two squabbling at the feeder (the victor is still perched at lower left as the vanquished flies off at upper right), and then the victor flying off after having drunk his fill:
8:29 p.m. — For today’s long walk, I took a cue from my host at Rose City Book Pub, where I read “Story Time for Grownups” once a month last year. It’s the birthday of the owner, Elise Schumock.
I trekked across Tilikum Crossing bridge . . . north on Water Avenue and Second ’til I got past the Burnside Bridge . . . then worked my way diagonally northeast across Weidler, MLK Boulevard, and Broadway to continue north on Eighth.
Then it occurred to me that I’d be passing near Dick Lewis’s home (Dick and I were co-founders of the Bridgetown Morris Men back in 1992; that logo patch you see prominently displayed on the team’s web page was designed by my wife, Carole Barkley), so I phoned him from Eighth and Brazee to let him know I was coming, and he stepped out his door to sit in the porch swing while I chatted with him from his front yard.
After visiting with Elise and her two other guests, I headed home. It was a good 9 miles or so.
Selfie at Rose City Book Pub taken at about 3:45 p.m. today. This is the venue where I’ve done my live literature readings, “Story Time for Grownups,” every month for the past year.
Today I did an impromptu reading of the first few pages of Marilynne Robinson’s novel Home, which was the request of the owner, Elise Schumock, whom I visited on site to wish her a happy birthday. I also read “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” to Elise and two of her friends at the pub because I felt like it, and the elegiac tone of T.S. Eliot’s century-old poem felt oddly appropriate.
THURSDAY, APRIL 9
It was now after 5 p.m., I’d walked at least 7 miles already, and my legs were aching. I realized I might be held up at the place where I’d intended to cross the tracks at grade, and it would be a significant backtrack to find a bridge or viaduct that would take me over them.
At the rail crossing on SE 11th, the train was stopped dead. Automobiles lined up on the street were making three- and more-point turns to find another escape route. I paused at the crossing and watched another pedestrian climb over the rail cars to get to the other side.
As I was making up my mind to do the same, the cars rattled and lurched infinitesmally to the right, and I realized the train engines had reversed to close all the tiny gaps in the couplings and give themselves to start again in the other direction.
By the time I got up my nerve, the train had started to move forward and east, but at far less than walking speed, so I climbed the steps, strode across the train, and hopped down the other side. Once safely across, I turned back and took a photo of my escape route.
FRIDAY, APRIL 10
8:55 p.m. — Today’s long walk through Southeast Portland: north to Tilikum Crossing bridge, cross to the east side, south on Water Avenue and McLoughlin Boulevard to Sellwood, then across the New Sellwood Bridge to the west side again and north along the Willamette River.
Length was somewhere between 7 and 8 miles. I saw many beautiful and interesting sights within a mile of my home (at least as the crow flies) that none of us usually notice because we normally fly past them in a vehicle.
9:23 p.m. — Carole: “You’re gonna laugh at this, David; we’re getting another Amazon delivery on Sunday.”
Me: “Hope we’re home.”
Me: “Hope we’re home.”
SATURDAY, APRIL 11
9:27 a.m. — I listened to NPR’s “Morning Edition” 20 minutes. It was the first time I’d turned on the radio in months. Like cable TV, long before the pandemic hit, we’d simply gotten out of the habit . . . in favor of reading, checking news and entertainment online, walking the dog, and talking to each other and reading aloud over meals.
I recognized voices such as Scott Simon, of course, and the reporters were perky or at least matter-of-fact . . . but at the heart of most of the reports were the darker currents of our era: people with substance abuse issues are isolated, and more likely to be stressed . . . clinical trial studies that might have been the last hope for terminal patients with cancers and other deadly diseases have had to be dropped to keep clinics and hospitals available for anticipated covid-19 cases . . . shootings in Portland doubled in April . . . .
— sufferers of (proximately) non-lethal medical conditions (e.g., hypertension, diabetes, COPD) who can’t get to treatment or are refused it
— substance abuse addicts who can’t take it anymore
— stranger-on-stranger shootings
— domestic violence (including more shootings with “protective” firearms in the home, no doubt)
— suicides by whatever variety of means
None of the above would qualify as an unmistakably direct result of the novel coronavirus . . . and yet aren’t they?
10:55 a.m. — Here’s another reminder of how little we really know . . . how inaccurate the daily stats (and the projections based on them) may be . . . and therefore how foolish are any predictions any of us (especially You-Know-Who in Washington) might make at this point:
A friend of Carole’s in Michigan — currently the third-worst state for identified cases of covid-19 and deaths; it zipped past California earlier this week — just reported that her son had gotten tested for coronavirus and had to wait 16 DAYS to get his results.
That he tested negative might mean the general picture there might be better than it appears . . . but the incredibly long delay could also mean it’s much worse, because health authorities have fallen way behind in tracking it.
SUNDAY, APRIL 12
9:01 a.m. — Part of the pleasure of walking everywhere is the surprise of looking at things you’ve always seen from the other direction . . . how different everything looks when you walk the wrong way on a one-way street for drivers. Try this downtown on Broadway, sometime: Look up at the buildings in the blocks ahead of you, instead of just the storefronts on your block.
This can be as startling as the things you see close up that you’ve missed when you were riding by at 20 to 40 miles per hour.
12:21 p.m. — Nicholas Kristof, Yamhill Carlton High School graduate, reports on the view from the front lines in two hospitals in the Bronx:
“The truth is that the doctors too are frightened and exhausted, overwhelmed by death and their own helplessness. Dr. Nicole Del Valle, 29, told me that what shattered her was treating a 30-year-old woman with Covid-19 whose 23-year-old sister had just died of it; Dr. Del Valle called her own younger sister and ordered her not to leave home.
“The truth is that the doctors too are frightened and exhausted, overwhelmed by death and their own helplessness. Dr. Nicole Del Valle, 29, told me that what shattered her was treating a 30-year-old woman with Covid-19 whose 23-year-old sister had just died of it; Dr. Del Valle called her own younger sister and ordered her not to leave home.
“All day in the hospital, Dr. Del Valle maintains her reassuring manner as she intubates patients, holds their hands, fights for their lives — and then, she acknowledged, she goes home and cries….”
The past week it’s been “Trump is gonna be reelected, Biden can never win” . . . but I’ve seen hundreds of similar flat declarations based on little more than guesswork, far from complete information, as well as the speaker’s biases and guesswork.
People even think they’ve heard certainty — absolute and positive statements — when I’ve merely questioned theirs. Though my response has consisted of little more than “that ain’t necessarily so,” they fire back immediately as if I’ve taken the polar opposite stance from them. I’ve done nothing of the sort.
The coronavirus pandemic has loosed a flood of such behavior, of course — conspiracy theories and predictions galore.
The coronavirus pandemic has loosed a flood of such behavior, of course — conspiracy theories and predictions galore.
A little more effort to identify more of the unknowns and variables, or a willingness to wait until them come in . . . just a clean, straight, “I don’t know; we’ll just have to wait and see” . . . would be so much more intellectually honest, but far too few individuals seem able to manage that.
9:32 p.m. — Drivers . . . why are you running red lights and rolling through stop signs? Unless you’re running a Covid-19 case to a ventilator, what could possibly have you in a hurry these days? Aren’t you getting to your usual destinations a lot sooner than you used to, given the current traffic?
Cyclists . . . There is so little vehicular traffic on most streets and roads now, why not get off the sidewalks and use the marked bicycle lanes? Why not stay on the streets? They’re probably safer now than they’ve ever been in your lifetimes, and probably will ever be again.
MONDAY, APRIL 13
Here’s an ad for the theater company whose most recent production I was in — my first ever with them, and my first full stage show in seven years. Its performance run was cut short precisely halfway through its run by the collapse of society due to the pandemic.
This is the Trimet bus stop for the #35 line on SW Macadam at the Boundary Street intersection, roughly a dozen blocks south of our apartment.
8:23 p.m. — For days on end, Carole has tried to order frozen peas online for delivery, and it’s never available.
Her theory is that it’s one of the few vegetables that children will eat.
Her theory is that it’s one of the few vegetables that children will eat.
TUESDAY, APRIL 14
8:04 p.m. — Today’s long walk between 2:30 and 6:00 p.m.: across the Ross Island Bridge . . . over the railroad yards via the Holgate viaduct . . . to Reed College on SE 28th and through the campus to visit three different sites where I performed in plays or concerts between 2005 and 2010 . . . back across McLoughlin Boulevard via Bybee to Tacoma and the New Sellwood Bridge . . . and home through Johns Landing.
Likely more than 9 miles.
Likely more than 9 miles.
I don’t like to plan out the routes of my long walks in advance.
Possible infection bottlenecks such as bridges have to be approached tactically. I avoid busy arterials (especially for their heavier bicycle and pedestrian traffic), but other than that, I expect to head through quiet residential neighborhoods and large parking lots that parallel the boulevards.
Public parks can be a mixed bag — lots of other people head to those, especially in weather as nice as we’ve been having — so I tend not to target those as destinations.
Today I made lots of in-progress decisions. One was the choice to veer into the campus of Reed, which I hadn’t anticipated at all. Fortunately, the grounds were largely deserted, but I was surprised by how many striking memories surfaced, given that I had not attended the school as a student.
I acted in three productions of classic Greek plays (Euripides’s “Alcestis,” Aristophanes’s “Peace,” and Sophocles’s “Antigone”) in the outdoor amphitheater, and Shakespeare’s “As You Like It” on the Great Lawn, between 2005 and 2008. In 2010, I did vocal narration and a little bit of singing for the world premiere of then-Oregon Symphony associate conductor Gregory Vajda’s “Gulliver in Faremido,” with Third Angle New Music Ensemble, in Kaul Auditorium.
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